Double Exposure Photo Technique in Berlin

January 07, 2018

Techniques

After spending a great deal of 2017 outdoors in northerly countries like Iceland, Russia, Canada and Scotland, I was able to turn my photographic attention to my home city Berlin. Switching from the outdoor to the urban landscape was a bit of a challenge – I didn’t want to do your standard city portraiture.

I started experimenting with the double exposure feature of my Fuji X-Pro2, which allows you to combine two exposures into a single image. There is one key advantage to doing this technique on a digital camera: the X-Pro2 overlays the first image while you take the second exposure, which is very different to film photography, which would require you to keep the details of the original image in your mind – which shouldn’t be too hard but will make the perfect alignment of the two exposures more challenging – but what is and who likes a perfect image?

It takes some practice to get then hang of it, but my approach was to underexpose the first shot with one element as the focus of the image and then the second exposure slightly underexposed and sometimes out of focus. This approach allows for compositions that aren’t too busy. I like the result, and it is always unique, if not anything else. What a like about the technique the most, is that by blending images that can be taken quite close to one another, it can give a fuller and more dynamic impression of a place and time in a striking way.

This new approach lead to being a part of their “Liebling der Woche” campaign for the local transport authority BVG on Instagram.

By far the most popular photo posted on the BVG account

More Photography from Berlin

The art installation “Skalar – Reflections on Light and Sound” ran from the 27th of January to the 25th of February in Kraftwerk Berlin. Light artist Christopher Bauder and musician Kangding Ray truly tailored an amazing immersive experience to the former power station.

Berlin has a wealth of old abandoned buildings, although real estate is becoming scarce and the condemned buildings, amusement parks and the like are slowly but surely being cordoned off and torn down. All the more reason to go see them before they’re gone.